ubiquity in satellite-based telephony

Just check up mkwireless podcast about MSV (mobile satellite venture's) plans to roll-out sat telephony by 2009-2010 on this continent.

MSV's planned satellite telephony will surely make some ripples in the mobility world. It may make business sense to launch affordable handsets, however I strongly believe that dual-featured phones, which offers the customer to use 'a single phone' for any network standards- GSM or satellite systems or a combination of CDMA with satellite coverage*. A good example of this - Thuraya satellite systems. They not only address the coverage issue, but they enable mobile users over 210 countries (covers a gargantuan number of 2.3 bn people - phew!!) to switch to Satellite mode in their regular GSM handset without having to carry multiple phones. So, in other words, when they are out of their GSM coverage, the same handset connects to Thuraya's service. BTW, Boeing helped them launch this in 2000.
If MSV brings in big operators and mobile companies into this arrangement, life will be so much simpler for a Ohio-based farmer or a field-insurance agent in El-Paso.

*The mobility problem in this continent is that unlike ubiquitous GSM in the rest of the world, there are over three “largely incompatible” digital wireless technologies being used: GSM/GPRS, CDMA and iDEN. Then of course, to make matters worse, there is Wi-Max believed to compete with the rest and largely with 3G sibling under GSM family :)